


on flying

by kokiri



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 12:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7102492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokiri/pseuds/kokiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a series of moments in which the world did not end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on flying

**Author's Note:**

> i'm crossposting old fics from LJ! have some baekyeol.

The first time Chanyeol smoked a cigarette ended with him coughing until he threw up. It was a mistake, but he tried to take another drag and he didn’t feel very grown up at all. It ranked three on the list of the most embarrassing things that had ever happened to him and he still felt very much like a kid. This was a few weeks before he became a trainee, which was nothing but a series of trials and tests that made him feel stupid—stupid in the way kids feel when they’re trying their hardest to say something but voices much bigger and much louder won’t let them be heard.  
  
The measure of being a grown-up was arbitrary for Chanyeol. He felt very childish trying to smoke his first cigarette but felt very mature and worldly drinking his first beer even though it made him feel sick. He felt very wise after he kissed a girl for the first time, because none of his friends had ever done that before.  
  
He felt very small the night Baekhyun kissed him for the first time after a grueling day of vocal training and feeling like they were going to be stuck like this until it was no longer worth it.  
  
Baekhyun was always stolid and focused; to Chanyeol, he seemed very grown-up at first. But his hands had the tendency to shake a lot in the mornings as he was trying to get ready for his day. As time passed, he started acting out more and more as a result of the stress he refused to share with anyone and the most frustrating thing about it was that Chanyeol was powerless to help him.  
  
It seemed abrupt, but Chanyeol realized later that it was a long time coming. Baekhyun was nervously fiddling with the drawstring on his hoodie and he very quietly said, “I don’t like being around you so much. I feel trapped.”  
  
“Is that really my fault?” Chanyeol asked. His eyes burned from lack of sleep and his stomach was hurting, but he managed to not take out his bad moods on Baekhyun.  
  
“I guess not,” Baekhyun said. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.”  
  
In that moment it was Baekhyun who looked small. He surely felt even smaller.  
  
It was hard for Chanyeol to be mad at him.

   
  


There was an unusual amount of resentment in Jongin’s tone as he tried to help the other boys out at dance practice. He walked down the line and corrected their posture roughly, but softened the slightest bit when he got to Lu Han, who looked tired and peaked. Chanyeol wondered if a feeling of jealousy stirred in the guts of anyone else or if it was just him. Maybe he craved that softness from Baekhyun who had been snapping at him all day, or anyone else in the world at that point.  
  
Chanyeol had a laundry list in his head of things he would rather be doing at that exact moment—eating dinner with his sister, doing homework with friends like a normal high school-aged boy, going on dates, having teeth extracted from his head, literally dying—and he focused on that instead of the high tensions and strained politeness in the voices of everyone around him.  
  
By the time they retreated back to their room, he was thoroughly worn out. “Baekhyun, I could fall asleep right nooow,” he whined.  
  
“You should go to bed right now. It’s late,” Baekhyun said. They were lying together in Chanyeol’s bed and Baekhyun’s tone was very sweet. Chanyeol wondered why Baekhyun had been so out of sorts all day, and why he was suddenly so relaxed.  
  
“Hey,” Chanyeol said. “Have you ever been on an airplane before?”  
  
“Yeah. Why?”  
  
“Well, when—if we debut, we’re going to be flying lots of places, I guess.”  
  
“Have you ever been on a plane, Chanyeol?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Are you scared?”  
  
“I’m not scared of anything.”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Baekhyun laughed. “It’s really not that bad. You’ll get used to it eventually. That seems to be what’s in store for us. Getting used to things.”  
  
“Have you gotten used to me yet?” Chanyeol asked.  
  
Baekhyun shrugged after a silence that, to Chanyeol, said everything there was to say.

 

Chanyeol wished that they kissed half as much as they bickered.

 

A certain feeling of apprehension was always hanging in the air. The lot of them mostly seemed too scared get too close to each other, just in case they were left feeling a little too sincere and looking a little too vulnerable. Chanyeol envied the way Lu Han and Yixing talked quietly together in a way that seemed very genuine, and wondered why he couldn’t allow himself to reach that level of comfort with anyone else.  
  
Sometimes he felt like he had that with Baekhyun, but he wasn’t sure if Baekhyun felt the same.  
  
It was hard to tell if they were genuinely becoming friends or if they were just accustomed to seeing each other around. After all, it was nearly impossible for them to not converse and have lunch together like friends did.  
  
They shared tender moments as they were falling asleep—and as they were half-asleep, with Baekhyun crawling into Chanyeol’s bed to give him nervous kisses on the neck late at night.  
  
“Are you lonely?” Chanyeol whispered. “Baekhyun, do you like me?”  
  
“I like you, Chanyeol. But I won’t be able to like you forever, because once we debut I have to be a different Baekhyun. I can’t be Baekhyun who likes Chanyeol. I can only be Baekhyun the idol, who will maybe have a few dating scandals with pretty girls or something like that. That worries me a lot.”  
  
Chanyeol loved the honesty in those moments but at the same time he hated facing the truth. “Why do you have to be a different Baekhyun all the time? I think no matter what, I’ll always be Chanyeol who likes Baekhyun. Nobody has to know except me and you.”  
  
“I’m not a very good liar,” Baekhyun said. “I would rather not like you at all.”  
  
It was something Chanyeol understood very well. He appreciated girls in all their gentle prettiness, soft curves, that graceful litheness that drove all the other boys mad.  
  
But they didn’t drive Chanyeol mad. Not the way the dip of Baekhyun’s collarbone did.  
  
That drove him absolutely wild.  
  


 

“Flying’s not really a big deal. We’ll sit next to each other.”  
  
“Hmm,” Chanyeol grumbled. He was trying his hardest to sew a button back on to his favorite shirt using a sewing kit he borrowed from Kyungsoo. He and Baekhyun were sitting back-to-back on the latter’s bed, slightly pushing their weight against one another—it was silly, but Chanyeol liked the consistent reminder that Baekhyun was actually there.  
  
“You can even hold my hand if you get too scared,” Baekhyun teased.  
  
“I won’t be scared,” said Chanyeol. “I already told you—nothing scares me.”  
  
Truthfully, plenty of things scared Chanyeol. Needles, spiders, scare chords in horror movies. He knew he couldn’t really be sure if he was scared of flying without actually trying it, but the dread in his gut felt very real at that moment.  
  
“Is it hard to breathe when you’re in the air?”  
  
“A little bit. You’ll get used to it.”  
  
“If I don’t get scared will you still hold my hand?”  
  
“No.”  
  


 

They decided to try smoking together.  
  
Chanyeol wanted to play it off like he knew what he was doing, but his eyes watered and his lungs started to ache. He coughed and handed the cigarette to Baekhyun, who eyed it nervously before handing it back to Chanyeol.  
  
“I don’t know about this,” he said. “You look uncomfortable.”  
  
“Yeah,” Chanyeol said, “it’s not really that great. It wasn’t that great the first time I tried it, it’s not really that great now.” He dropped the cigarette on the ground and stomped it out. “What do you want to do?”  
  
Baekhyun shrugged. “We could go back to the dorms.”  
  
“That’s boring.”  
  
“I don’t know. I’m so used to not having any free time that I really don’t know how to spend it once I do have it. I kind of just want to go to bed.”  
  
It was a little too cold to just be standing around like they were. Baekhyun was restless and nervous, and Chanyeol mostly was focused on how much he wanted to hold his hand. They could go to a movie, but Chanyeol would make no promises to keep his hands off Baekhyun in the back of the theatre. They could sneak into a club, but neither of them were too fond of that kind of noisy, sweaty environment. They could get drunk and stumble back to their room, trying not to make too much noise, and fall asleep together.  
  
In the end, they walked back to the dorms together without doing much of anything. Baekhyun let Chanyeol hold his hand as long as no one was around to see them and Chanyeol couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so happy. His lungs still burned from the cigarette and he was thinking maybe, maybe, _maybe_ once they got home Baekhyun would breathe some air back into them.  
  
He wasn’t so lucky.  
  
Baekhyun kept his scarf wrapped around his reddened face as he warmed his hands over the heater and he was more upset than Chanyeol had never seen him. He cried and cried, because it just wasn’t fair. He’d give all of it up, if it meant he could walk down the street with Chanyeol like a normal boy.  
  
“You don’t mean that,” Chanyeol whispered, kissing the top of his head. “You love singing. You love singing more than you like me.”  
  
Even though it felt like it most certainly would, the world did not end that night.  
  


 

The dreaded day finally came.  
  
Chanyeol nervously clutched his passport in his hands and wondered how many people die a year in plane-related accidents. He decided it would be best if he never looked that up. Baekhyun helped Chanyeol adjust his seatbelt and assured him everything would be okay.  
  
Even though it felt like a terrible idea, Baekhyun had insisted that Chanyeols should take the window seat.  
  
“See, the way I got over being scared of flying was by looking out the window until I was used to what I was seeing,” Baekhyun explained. “It just stops being scary after a point. If you look at it enough, it stops looking different than what you’re used to. Just like anything scary, really.”  
  
“You promise it’ll be okay?” Chanyeol asked nervously. In that moment, he felt small and powerless. He hated it.  
  
“Yeah, I promise,” Baekhyun said.  
  
Baekhyun took his hand and held it tight through the turbulence.


End file.
